Tony Daniel (57 page)

There was also the idea, put forward by Theory, that they might detect extremely small bursts of Hawking radiation from the ship. The isotropic coat acted, in many ways, like a black hole, and the “virtual particles” that the vacuum was continually generating might be affected. The idea was that a virtual positron-electron pair would spontaneously generate next to the coating, and one particle be instantly shunted around the ship by the quantum processes involved in the weak force that the coating employed. The other particle would then shoot off into space—and be detectable.

It was all guesswork, hopes, and prayers—and Sherman always assumed that his opponent would be praying, too, to negate that advantage.

“Anything, Theory?” Sherman said. There was a wall display, and Sherman could instantly go into the virtuality if he really wanted to have a look. Why the jamming device cut off communications but did not shut down the local action of the grist was another mystery yet to be solved, but Sherman was thankful for that small blessing. Without it, he would have lost his free converts, and navigating the ship would have been impossible.

Sherman went into the virtuality and checked in at the hold with his captains. Every space-adapted soldier in the brigade was standing in full readiness. Nine hundred seventy-eight soldiers, with another four hundred six in pressure suits. Against what? He knew that the
Montserrat
had deployed the rip tether, so could not have the full complement of troops a destroyer was capable of carrying. But perhaps they had packed in five or ten thousand. He was estimating the highest odds, ten to one against him, just to be prepared.

What was he overlooking? What had he forgotten?

“Quench, where is that man we pulled out of space? Our young hero?”

“Sergeant Neiderer, sir? He’s on knit channel V9.”

“Neiderer?” Sherman said, and then realized he’d neglected to make the mental switch over to the correct channel. Getting jumpy, Sherman. Stand fast. Quench, tactfully, said nothing about his colonel’s mistake. Sherman changed channels. “Sergeant Neiderer?”

“Yes . . . Colonel, sir?”

“I want your thoughts, son.”

“My thoughts, Colonel?”

“Come into the virtuality for a moment.”

Neiderer, appeared before him, and Sherman realized that this was the first time he’d ever seen the man. He hadn’t realized that he was black.

“You’re the only one of us who has faced the enemy face-to-face.”

“I only faced a tether, sir.”

“Yes. Well. Tell me anything you’ve thought of. Any ideas or gut feelings you have.”

Neiderer immediately reached up and scratched his nose. “I don’t know anything in particular, Colonel. I wish I could help you. Just a grunt, sir.”

“Just a grunt with two weeks of k.p. duty if you don’t cut it out with the false modesty, son.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now just talk to me for moment.”

“All right, sir. I . . . I’ve been thinking about Charon. I used to work there, in a warehouse out on the surface. Um, I had a girl. She split . . . we broke up, I mean. But I’ve been thinking about her a lot for the past couple of hours. It was my last girl who wasn’t . . . well, she was my last girlfriend, sir.”

“Go on, Neiderer.”

“Her name was Carol. Erased the only picture I had of her, damn it. I lost my job at the warehouse, and I, uh, hit kind of a low point, Colonel. Real low. Lost just about everything, including my mind.”

“But you snapped out of it?”

“Yes, sir. I joined the army, sir!”

“Uh-huh.”

“I was thinking about hauling those barrels around on Charon. It was low-gee, so we could pick up some really big ones. Made me feel like an ant carrying a big moth or something. Not that I’ve ever seen that but on the merci. Anyway, the big problem wasn’t the weight, but the inertia, sir. An object at rest likes to remain at rest, my team boss used to say. And one in motion likes to stay that way. So we had these tethers.”

“What?”

“These pieces of elastic. We’d hook two of those barrels together and move one of them, and the tether would stretch out, then the next one we had to move wasn’t nearly so hard to get going.”

“But you put the same amount of energy into it, either way.”

“I don’t know about that one way or the other, Colonel,” Neiderer said. “All I know is that it was easier. But what I was going to tell you was that, after work or during break, me and the others would get to playing with those tethers and sling ourselves all over the place. You could do some fancy gymnastics when two people were roped together that way. It was fun as hell, sir. I was thinking about those days.”

Sherman sighed. “Sounds like a good time, soldier,” he said. He was a bit embarrassed that he had called Neiderer away from his mental preparations for battle for such a silly conversation, but, of course, Sherman did not let his embarrassment show. “Well, stay ready.”

“I will, Colonel.”

“Dismissed.”

Neiderer returned to his awareness
in
the hold. Sherman returned to the bridge.

He sat down and considered the stars in the viewscreen.

Long stretches of empty night winding a body in
, Myers had written.
And the stars pinpricks in a shroud
.

TB was working on a poem. Then he wasn’t.

“I can’t,” said TB. “I don’t know what to say about it, except that it hurts.”

Was this Ben talking, or Thaddeus? Who was
he
to say?

TB crumpled up the paper he was working on, then, recalling the shortage of energy to make another one, carefully unfolded it from the ball he’d crushed it into.

He thought he might get a drink, and had gotten up to go and find some alcohol, when there was a knock on his door.

It was Bob. He invited himself in and sat on the shabby couch that also served as TB’s bed. Bob had brought along his fiddle.

“Why don’t we go out and get drunk?” said TB. “I was just going to.”

“Good idea,” said Bob. “But I got to practice first.”

“Practice?”

“This fiddle’s getting rusty.”

TB was a little irritated. He liked Bob’s playing quite a lot, but he had been intent on getting that drink.

“Why can’t you do that at home?” TB asked Bob.

“Home,” said Bob. “Where would that be?”

Shit, thought TB, with all these things happening, I haven’t thought to ask where Bob is staying.

“You don’t have a place?”

“Oh, I have a
place
,” Bob replied. “Everywhere’s a
place
.”

“Where are you living, Bob?”

“You sure talk a lot more than you used to,” said Bob. “But that’s okay, I guess. I just thought I’d practice a bit, is all.”

“Well, I’m not stopping you.”

Bob made no further reply. He smiled and put bow to fiddle. What came out was not one of Bob’s usual dancing jigs, but something slower, more stately.

“Where the hell did you learn to play like that?” TB asked him after he was done with the piece.

“I used to be the best musician in the solar system,” Bob said. “But I got tired of that.”

TB laughed for the first time in many days. Maybe Bob was telling the truth. You never could tell with him.

“What’s your real name, Bob? Would I recognize it since you were so goddamn famous?”

“I didn’t say famous. I said good.” Bob gestured with his bow at the paper on TB’s table. “They used to call me Despacio, back in the days of yore.”

TB took a good, long look at Bob.

He had to be lying like a rug.

Didn’t he?

“Why don’t you let me practice a little more, and you go on back to what you were doing?” the fiddler said.

TB returned to the page with a sigh, and Bob began to play. It was a lovely tune, but sad—sad and stately, with only a little hope in a few bright notes. Somewhere in the middle of it, TB began to write.

He began to write a new poem about his time among the wounded and dying.

And a million kilometers from Neptune, a red light flashed.

“We have them, Colonel,” Theory said. “Gravitational and virtual-particle confirmation and correlation. It worked.”

From the sound of Theory’s voice, Sherman thought the major didn’t even believe it himself. Sherman was in the virtuality instantly, floating in the
Boomerang
’s virtual bridge, which was the counterpart of the regular bridge, except that this one gave Sherman readouts graphically, represented in the air about him, a clear view of the space around the
Boomerang,
and instant control of all ship’s weaponry. What it felt like was growing into a giant and hanging like a wraith over his spaceship, ready to grab his victim.

The
Montserrat
was several thousand kilometers away. And then the ship began to acquire form and substance as Sherman and his ship drew nearer.

“Anti-grist deployed?”

“Yes, Colonel.”

“Give me my captains.”

“Quench here, sir.”

“Machination, Colonel.”

“Sleighthand, Colonel.”

One by one the companies reported in, and Sherman then went to officers’ broadband. “We’ve located our adversary,” he told them. “Maximum readiness, ladies and gentlemen. We’re closing on them. Everyone in catapults. Weapons fired up. All pisses taken.”

“Yes, sir!”

He returned to the bridge.

“I don’t think they see us, Theory.”

“Not yet, Colonel.”

“Stay in that jamming range as long as possible. I think it is our best friend right at the moment.”

“Yes, sir.”

They closed further.

“Colonel, the jamming field is tapering. Part of the ship will be exposed in five minutes, if the current rate continues.”

“Have we got the range for a torpedo?”

“Checking. No, sir, not yet. A few ten-klicks short.”

“I want to come out of this field with all guns blazing, Major. Doesn’t matter if we haven’t quite reached optimal range.” Sherman rubbed his stubbled face. “In fact, I want to emerge from a nuclear explosion.”

“I’ll arrange it with Captain Trigger, sir.”

Sherman waited. A dead calm descended on him. He’d never felt so still in his life. Focused. Ready to kill.

“Almost there, Colonel.”

“All weapons to forward.”

“Yes, sir.”

Dead. Calm.

“We’re in unjammed space, sir.”

“Fire.”

The
Boomerang
erupted like a supernova.

They sped toward the foe.

“Report!”

“Three torpedoes away. All cannon forward. Nuke to the aft, as ordered . . . sir, we have a hit. Torpedo three . . . no, sir. It’s gone through grist five klicks from the ship and ignited.”

Then Sherman saw it—the familiar blossom of antimatter combining with matter and both furiously annihilating one another. The pressure wave hit the
Montserrat
.

Most of the killing radiation was shunted by that ship’s isotropic coating, but something got through. The
Montserrat
was rocked, and suddenly torqued at least forty-five degrees.

“Hello,” said Sherman. “We’re here.”

“Sir, we’re cutting through several layers of grist outriders with the cannon.”

“More torpedoes,” said Sherman. “When?”

“Ten seconds, sir.”

“Right. Are my rocks ready?”

“Standing by in the materials catapults, Colonel.”

Sherman had selected some prime specimens from Neptune’s ring to arm his rock thrower with. Each rock was coated with the nastiest grist he had available, as well. Even if they got blasted apart they might still do some damage as pebbles.

So, their vinculum transmissions have just doubled.

So, they know we’re here and are calling in to report.

A thought struck Sherman. “Theory, do we have full merci use at the moment?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Broadcast this fight—broadband across the merci. Shoot me off a camera or make use of some grist.”

“Yes, sir. Transmission is activated, Colonel. Unless they find a way to block it, everyone in the Met can tune in . . . torpedoes armed, sir.”

“Off with them!”

“Yes, sir.”

More streaks through the darkness, homing in. But not to go home.

“Colonel, we are closing on fire-down range.” If the
Boomerang
did not turn around and apply the engines in the opposite direction at that point, she would overshoot the
Montserrat
. Can’t have that happening, Sherman thought.

“Time it, Theory,” he said. “I want to give them a faceful of our engines.”

“Yes, sir.”

Another antimatter bloom, this one very close.

“Was that us?”

“Checking. Yes, sir.”

“Throw those rocks.”

“Catapults activated. Rocks away, sir!”

A barrage of stones left the
Boomerang
, each flying at the ship’s velocity plus some.

“Fire-down range in two seconds, Colonel.”

“Bring us about.”

“Yes, sir.”

The
Boomerang
turned into a controlled slide, with the fires of its antimatter-reaction engines inevitably boring in on the
Montserrat
.

Carmen San Filieu and her officers were madly trying to deal with everything at once on the
Montserrat
bridge. It had all happened at once, and, worse, her meal had been ruined—thrown all over her. One of the serving platters had also, unfortunately, decapitated her favorite steward.

But she must react, or all was lost. She had already lost precious seconds in figuring out exactly what was going on. It was the
Jihad
, come back to haunt her.

“Damage reports!” screamed Bruc.

“Number three cannon’s out,” answered the battle-station officer.

“How long until you can get me torpedoes?”

“Thirty seconds, sir.”

“Damn it. What about the materials catapults?”

“We are carrying half a load, sir.”

“Get them ready!”

“Yes, Admiral.”

San Filieu gazed out, virtually. Flashes, positronic fire, streaking torpedoes. The stench of burning grist conveyed to her by virtual simulation.

And, worst of all to her mind—to her heart and gut—the whole sky was on fire behind the
Jihad
. It was as if the ship had arrived from the core of the sun.